Rocks from Santa by Alton Bostick

Today is the ninth day in the series of holiday stories, poems and songs created by members of the Trinity Writers’ Workshop. These submissions were included in the TWW Christmas Book which was given to children and their families during the Christmas at the Stockyards event in Fort Worth, Texas on December 3, 2011. The ninth of these writers is Alton Bostick.

Rocks from Santa

by Alton Bostick

Some thirty or forty years ago my brother-in-law, who is one of the nicest people you could ever meet, had just been assigned to the Fire Department Training Division where he had a desk. As a gift for some occasion, my sister wanted to buy him a conversation piece to place on his desk. She decided on a geode. It was broken open, a beautiful thing with amethyst crystals of various shades of purple and white. As you might imagine it was quite heavy and the outside looked like well, a rock. While he was opening the gift his first view of the item was that of the back side and he uttered the question, “Is this just a rock?” Somehow that got back to Old Santa and every Christmas since then there has been an attractively wrapped gift from that jolly old elf to Jerry that turned out to be — you guessed it, a rock.

At first they were some of the ugliest old rocks, but as the years went by, they went through a change, and included interesting stones from places he’d traveled, from each of the Great Lakes and on one Christmas, five stones from the very creek where David slew Goliath.

The tradition is so well established that his children, grandchildren and great-grand children expect this Rock to show up at one of their Christmas celebrations.

This year though, there is a rumor that a rare stone has been found. We have it on good authority that it could be ancient fossilized leavings of a dinosaur.

Upon the discovery of the interesting stone, two of Santa’s elves, Uff and Effi took the fossil to the renowned Chinese archeologist, Dr. Hoo Digs.

“Doctor Hoo Digs, would you examine this stone that’s been unearthed and tell us about it.”

After just a moment the doctor answered, “The sandstone is round, somewhat circled in the center with the preceding end turned down, and the trailing end up. There is no doubt, that this relic is the dropping of Velociraptor, a smallish dinosaur, which inhabited the Pueblo da Pojoague area of what is now New Mexico.”

Effi was a blond elf, and asked, “Droppings?”

Uff looked at her, “Poop.”

Wrinkling her nose she said, “That is what it looked like.”

The Doctor laughed, “Yes miss, we professionals just refer to the little beast as poopy, because that’s what we find all over that area.”

“Doctor, you said smallish, about the size of what other animal?” Uff asked.

Digs said, “Hum,” he considered the question, his face lit up. “Think of a kangaroo from the waist down, but with no pouch, yet with bigger more powerful upper legs, then add huge-rake like claws for digging and a head like a hog, tusk and all. He’d weigh in between ninety and one hundred forty pounds.”

“Digging?” Effi questioned.

“Yes, the species were vegetarians; they ate mostly a cabbage-like plant and dug up an ancestor of the sweet potato, ingesting a lot of sand with them. Not a fellow you want to spend an evening with in a confined space.”

“So they died out with the rest of the Dinos?” Uff guessed.

“No. Surprisingly not, in fact, they survived several more centuries.” The doctor answered.

“With its size compared to the huge predators back then I’m astonished they weren’t eaten out.” Uff wondered.

“Why weren’t they?” Effi asked.

Doctor Digs said, “Well, young lady, No one knows, but I have a theory. I think they weren’t eaten by the big guys because — well, they probably tasted like poop.”

Effi blushed, Uff said, “Well doctor, we’ll take this information back to Santa. He’s well past just giving Jerry any old rock.”

Doctor Hoo Digs handed the relic to Uff and they thanked him for his help.

After leaving Uff said, “You know I felt better about the fossil before I knew this much about it. Here you hold this thing while I drive our sled.

Effi’s nose twitched. “I’m not touching old poop, even if it is fossilized.

The class will include techniques in buiding believable, interesting three-dimensional characters. I will also assist and encourage students to interact with each other through twitter, facebook and their blogs.

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About Sharon K Owen

I am a fiction writer, a university professor, a copy editor and an online writing teacher. My first Romantic Suspense: Thicker Than Water (Brands Crossing Series) was published in 2011 and the second book in the series, Whatever Goes Around, will be published in 2016.
My short stories and poetry have been published in Descant, Concho River Review, Iron Horse, American Literary Review, Trinity Writer's Workshop newsletter and collections of Christmas stories.
I am blessed with a loving, supportive family, a multitude of friends and the good fortune to share a cozy sanctuary in North Texas with my two cats (Matt and Cinders).